Философия

The article considers the mental foundations of the cultural specificity of the Eastern Christian civilization based on the cultural-historical method. The purpose of the article is to clarify the historical model which formed the mental differences between Western European and Russian cultures. It is shown that the roots of the civilizational division of Europe into Western and Eastern ones are largely determined by the special way in which “barbarian” ethnic groups were attached to the Christian and ancient traditions.

The correlation between the linguistic turn and the turn to ontology is analyzed. The ideal of “pure mind” in classical philosophy is corresponded to epistemological and methodological orientation of philosophical thought, and the turn to language in the philosophy of the ХХ–ХXI centuries is followed by the turn to ontology. It is proved that, despite the contrast, Russian and western philosophy of language have convergence points in the sphere of ontology.

The main subjects of the article are the analysis of Thomas Reid’s conception concerning the “active power” and an attempt to give the definition of it on the basis of this conception. Such an examination hasn't been undertaken in Russian philosophy up to now. The goal of the article is to combine these meanings and to reveal the sense of his conception of this power by stepwise consideration of specific character of every meaning of this present power, outlined fragmentarily in his philosophical works.

The article is devoted to the analysis of such properties of normativity as ascriptivity and descriptivity, as well as the principle of the evolutionary development of norms. The article defines the content of the concept of “norm”, identifies two main interpretations of it: as a combination of a standard set of properties and as a sample of desirable behavior. It is argued that the second interpretation forms the idea of social norms.

The article deals with the local aspect of privacy, embodied in a human dwelling. The aim of the research is to philosophically analyze the local aspect of privacy, to identify its essential characteristics. The study is based on an integrated approach that includes logical, hermeneutic-interpretive and comparative methods. The novelty of the work lies in the conceptualization of the socio-philosophical phenomenon of local privacy. The presence of a private space closed from the eyes of the public gives an individual a sense of security and peace.

The article is devoted to the philosophical understanding of the concept of “cultural status” in modern scientific discourse, which includes structural-functional and communicative approaches and allows to identify the invariant features present in this concept. These features, according to the authors, are associated with the category of measure, which fixes the balance of the diverse features of human nature. Cultural status reflects the position of its bearer in the space-time continuum and the context of values, norms, and relationships.

The article provides the analysis of the computer interface as a digital world phenomenon in correlation with its constitutive and representative function for image production. Several concepts of media theorists and researchers of visual culture of new (i. e. digital) media (M. Hansen, D. Bruno, D. Drucker) are examined in the context of considering intermediary functions of interface between the computer code message and the user. The analysis of the project of art group Share Lab about the interface and algorithms of Facebook for user behavior is being carried out.

The article is devoted to the study of understanding the meaning-forming functions of culture, determined by its spatial characteristics in the philosophical work of Michel Foucault. He puts forward the thesis about the decisive role of space in social practice, the growth of complication of its organization from planar to three-dimensional, and opens up virtual spaces of cultural thinking. Space is understood not only geographically, but as the initial impulse and attribute of culture.

This article is dedicated to the metaphilosophical pessimism of C. McGinn. McGinn is known as a main proponent of “new mysterianism” in the contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. According to mysterianism, we can’t solve the mind-body problem because of the natural cognitive limitations on our side. McGinn’s view on the nature of philosophy is the component of this conception. In general, mysterian metaphilosophy didn’t get enough coverage in the research literature but it deserves a bigger interest.

In the XXI century, the humanity continues to actively transform the world, technological progress puts rationalism in the first place as a worldview. Of course, the balance between rationalism and irrationalism in one time dimension and cultural space is difficult to achieve, each of these types periodically prevails and therefore has a specific impact on culture. At the same time, periods of changing cognitive and value orientations may be accompanied by crisis phenomena of a moral and ethical nature.